The Influence of The Quantitative Relationship Between Bad and Positive Online Reviews on Consumers’ Willingness to Shop Online

Abstract

Online shopping evaluation is one of the important decisions for consumers to do online shopping. The negative comments in the evaluation have an important impact on consumers in shopping. Based on the product classification theory, this paper classifies the products consumers mainly buy on online shopping platforms into five major categories: daily necessities, educational and sporting goods, home appliances and digital products, food, and clothing accessories, and serves as a moderating factor. The hypothesis is that the number of negative reviews about logistics and transportation would negatively affect consumers’ willingness to purchase daily necessities and food. The number of bad reviews about merchants’ services would negatively affect consumers’ purchase intention for apparel accessories. The number of bad reviews about products that would negatively affect consumers’ willingness to purchase digital home appliances and educational and sporting goods online was proposed. A questionnaire was used to obtain the sample data of consumers’ online shopping intention, and SPSS was used to test its reliability with different analyses and correlation analyses. Based on the correlation between the content and the number of negative reviews, it showed that six or more negative reviews for food products significantly affect consumers’ willingness to purchase. The number of negative reviews about merchant services for daily necessities and the product for clothing accessories significantly affects consumers’ willingness to purchase. Furthermore, for all types of products, when the number of negative reviews increases, consumers need to increase their willingness to purchase with more positive reviews. Among them, consumers’ occupation, average monthly consumption level, and length of exposure to online shopping moderate the credibility of consumers’ judgment of negative reviews. In conclusion, it is concluded that Taobao merchants should pay attention to the content and quantity in negative reviews, improve the quality of products, services, logistics, and transportation from the consumers’ point of view, and improve the competitiveness of their products for better online marketing.